Posts by life is to short

95

What was it about Bethel that woke you up?

by cognisonance in

jw
friends

one the how many exbethelites thread it was mentioned that some think one either leaves down the path towards apostasy or as a 100% true believer.

i'm curious what experiences did you face at bethel that woke you up (or started to at least)?.

.

life is to short

Reading through this thread has brought back so many painful memories.

I thought Bethel was going to be the best place I could be. It had been my goal forever but I was a sister and never thought I would be allowed to go.

I got married to my husband who is older than I am and he was the only elder in small country congregation. It was hell from day one in the hall. People would call and demand my husband's time they treated me like dirt. I was yelled at all the time and talked down to horribly. I told the CO I was loosing it and he told me that I was being selfish because Jehovah needed my husband and I could have him in the new system.

I begged my husband to put in our apps for Bethel hoping to escape where we were. We got accepted for the 90 Sands project. I was so excited that I was going to get away from the hall of hell and I just knew Bethel was going to be great. Boy was I in for a shock.

My first day there I meet my overseer and HE HATED ME he looked me up and down and just hated me. I had asked the CO's wife what I should bring to wear at Bethel and she said that I should NEVER bring any jeans. Sisters did not wear them and that if I brought any I could be looked down on. Now this was the wife of the CO who had told me I was selfish for wanting to spend time with my husband so that should have told me something but I was young and stupid. I was placed in construction working on 90 Sands and that was all the sisters wore were jeans. My overseer was so mad that first day because I did not have a pair of jeans with me. I had to go to the hopper donated cloths to get something to wear.

I remember my first day there sitting in the locker room just crying my eyes out not understanding why I was being treated so horribly by my overseer I remember thinking that Jehovah hated me. I will never forget the real pain I felt in my heart that day. I truly wanted to die.

It felt like I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. My overseers favorite saying was that 70 to 80 percent of the people at bethel were only there for the free food and shelter. I knew he was meaning me. He was upset if I used any of the Bethel services. I got a tooth ache after I had been there six months and I would not go the the dentist because of my overseer looking down on me, my tooth fell out because of it and still today I have problems with it.

Everyone's story here on this board is spot on to what I remember. It is so sad because I truly loved the religion when I went, I was not there for any free food and it just crushed me that I was told that.

On the plus side I finally had some time with my husband for the first time in our four year marriage. As busy as we were at Bethel we had way more time together then we ever did in the congregation with him being the only elder. Its truly a sad religion that will not even let you have family time without making you feel you are steeling from Jehovah.

LITS

16

Having It Both Ways

by Perry in

i posted this 10 years ago.

here is an updated version fresh for the 2012 holidays :.

1. jehovahs witnesses claim to have no clergy and hence are supposed to be totally unlike christendoms' rulers who get special reverence and lord it over their brothers.

life is to short

Very well written. The huge problem is JW's do not have any critical thinking and they are proud of it.

LITS

24

HELP!!! Need Contacts in Portland-Gresham Oregon

by Juan Viejo2 in

a very special request for help - not money - just information!!!.

i normally would not ask this kind of a favor, but this really is important.. i am working with portland area investigators and journalists who are doing research on the whitney heichel /jonathan holt murder case and one other case involving other serious criminal activity.

they are particularly interested in anyone who might have attended kingdom halls in or around gresham and might know some of the members, former jws, or other related contacts in that area.. if you are from that area, or have connections there, please contact me via pm.

life is to short

Bump

47

Did you ever have to walk out of/shut off a movie when watching with JWs?

by keyser soze in

jw
friends

i can only recall one occasion.

it was when my brother and future wife were dating.

they had dinner at my parents' house, along with her uber-zealous/borderline psychotic parents.

life is to short

My parents would not allow me to see any movies growing up because a CO once said that we should not see any PG movies as they were graded by the world and if the world said it needed parental guidance then shouldn't that tell us something. The CO just ranted that if the world thinks it is somewhat bad then Jehovah's people should have better standards then the world! RIGHT? Thus no movies for our family and yet growing up one of my dad favorite things had been to go the movies. How said he let a stupid religion control his life. Somehow my dad took it to mean even G rated movies were so bad also so the first movie I went to see was when I was 16 years old it was Bambi and I had to sneak out of the house to see it.

Also I loved to read as a kid and I devoured book. I loved the Wizard of oz books and I got into trouble by a elder when I was 12 years old. He came by to visit my parents and I had left my book out that I was reading by mistake. I tried to grab it so I could hide it but he grabbed it out of my hand as I walked by and just glared at me after seeing what it was.

I was a 12 year old kid. It still hurts even now the way he treated me that day, the look that man gave me as a 12 year old kid was like I was pond scum for reading the book.

LITS

7

Update on the Mermaid

by Cadellin in

i don't post here that much, though i read posts everyday.

it's mostly because of the ie7 problem (don't use ff that much).

anyway, that's beside the point.

life is to short

I am sorry I did not realize your husband is still an elder, my husband just walked out the door to go in service also.

I just do not get how they cannot wake up to the fact that this is a cult. It is all just so clear to me that this religion is just a huge freaking sham.

It is just mind boggling to me. It is just so hard to know that my husband is using our car and gas, the money I work so hard for, and here my husband used the car to haul around people who will not even speak to me when I see them in the store or in the mall. Yet these people who shun me who treat me like am the walking dead will sit in my car, use my gas not give my husband a dime of money and they have even broken things, I got into the car one time after he had used it in service and the cup holder was laying broken on the back seat they never even told my husband they had broken it. Yet the women who broke it shunned me at the coffee house the next week. Oh the love of this stupid religion and I am not disfellowshiped nor DA'ed I only just stopped going to the meetings.

How can my husband not see why that hurts? I just do not get it.

I am just sorry that you are going through this, this religion destroys families is all I can say.

LITS

35

I am exhausted emotionally.

by PaintedToeNail in

jw
friends

i have been reading ashley judd's 'all things bitter and sweet' autobiography, and it has exhausted me.

she paints a picture of neglect and abuse from early childhood on.

as i sat reading, i realised i was identifying with so much of what she wrote.. why, when having an emotional breakdown as a teenager, major obsessive compulsive disorder, obvious depression symptoms, would you refuse to get medical help for your child?

life is to short

Painted ToeNail

You asked if I am still with my husband and the answer is yes.

My husband was deleted as an elder in March of 2009 because of me. I was throwing a fit over the fact that we had three pedophiles in the hall.

The CO demanded that I get a handle on my feelings about them and that because my husband was an elder I would have to have them in my car and take them out in service.

It would have been over my dead body. I noticed you did a thread about you parents going out in service with a pedophile and his wife and how yet your mother shuns your brother.

I do not know what my husband would have done if I had not been so extremely mad and flipped out over it. This was a deal breaker in our marriage.

Well because I was vocal and I even sent the court and police records to Bethel the elders did not like that and so they deleted my husband because they told him I was not in subjection enough after all of his years of putting them first and being in their brotherhood they kicked him out in one night.

We have talked of splitting up, it been really hard with a lot of hurt but I do agree with problemaddict and what he/she said here

("Time only moves in one direction, and those things are no longer happening to you, so I know it sounds oversimplified, but you have to complete that circle of letting things that already happen, continue to affect your now. Know what I mean? Think on that concept for a while. That the event that caused your pain has already happened. So what causes the pain now since it isn't happening now?")

Its been so hard but my husband is not fighting me about not going to the meetings he knows I do not believe in the cult anymore and that I HATE IT now with a passion and he lets me do that without juding me now and that is huge. Plus a part of me still loves him and I feel sorry for him, he put his whole life into this cult, gave up years of making a living doing what the CO's demaned and they just dump him.

It still hurts when he goes out in service and I worry about the pedophiles that might be there. All three of the pedophiles I knew of have left the hall because of the fit I threw. I brought it out in the open not on purpose but it came out only because of how the elders were treating me. My husband was being used so much that when I stopped going it was huge news in the hall. It was funny because it truly backfired on the elders. They were blaming me for telling everyone and yet it was not me but them in a ton of ways in how they handled it.

Anyway I am trying to move for now, I am getting counselling and it helps a lot but its like being really hurt badly like breaking a bone or something that puts you in the hospital. It can heal but it still hurts when someone touches it or something that reminds you of the past. It just all comes flooding back.

I am trying to do what problemaddict said and realize that "So what causes the pain now since it isn't happening now?"

LITS

35

I am exhausted emotionally.

by PaintedToeNail in

jw
friends

i have been reading ashley judd's 'all things bitter and sweet' autobiography, and it has exhausted me.

she paints a picture of neglect and abuse from early childhood on.

as i sat reading, i realised i was identifying with so much of what she wrote.. why, when having an emotional breakdown as a teenager, major obsessive compulsive disorder, obvious depression symptoms, would you refuse to get medical help for your child?

life is to short

"So much loneliness."

I just reread that. I can also so totally relate to that. I was so lonely that it was unreal. As a kid and especially after we were married.

My husband told me after we were married I should never have married an elder. Finally after 18 years of marriage I told told him I know I thought I had married a husband and I totally regretted marrying him, he has never said it since. I was alone so much of our marriage it was unreal.

LITS

35

I am exhausted emotionally.

by PaintedToeNail in

jw
friends

i have been reading ashley judd's 'all things bitter and sweet' autobiography, and it has exhausted me.

she paints a picture of neglect and abuse from early childhood on.

as i sat reading, i realised i was identifying with so much of what she wrote.. why, when having an emotional breakdown as a teenager, major obsessive compulsive disorder, obvious depression symptoms, would you refuse to get medical help for your child?

life is to short

I read your post last night and it bothered me all night. It is so very, very sad and you are not the only one unfortunately.

There is a man in my husband's hall who had five kids and was an elder, the kids had no cloths that fit and not enough to eat, I have heard stories of them from others in the truth who knew them at the time. They were so poor it was unreal. They would run the streets looking for food, and of course they got into trouble which ticked off the father. I have been told the kids were always hungry. But the father thought it was more important that they live where the need was great and he be the only elder in the hall just scraping by. The wife was going crazy and finally had a breakdown, left him and went back to school, and has dug herself out of the hole this guy put her in.

Now get this before the kids came this man had a good job and benefits, etc but he gave it all up when he got married and started to have kids. Now this is the kicker after his wife left him and started over he tells everyone she is crazy always has been and its all her fault that the kids turned out bad. But the really upsetting thing is he remarried, got his former job back and makes good money now and was just two or three years ago reappointed to be an elder and he is strutting like a peacock around the KH.

It makes me so sick when I think about it. This guy no more qualifies to be an elder then some street person who is mentally ill. He destroyed or I should say tried to destroy five lives. One of his daughters turned out OK but the other have turned out sad and lost. It just breaks my heart.

Your story also reminds me also so much of myself. Though I grew up in a JW house my parents were not big on field service, but when I got married, I married a elder who was 17 years older then I am. I pioneered with him. I understand what it is like to be so cold that your feet hurt. I swear I froze my little toes as now when ever it get even slightly cold outside my toes just throb with pain, every winter they do that now.

There were no bathroom breaks, as I could just hold it for another couple of miles right?The only time my husband would stop was if someone else asked him to but not for me, the same with being cold, it was always like you can deal with it. Yeh wearing a dress with the wind blowing up it.

I had had Mono (I think that is how its spelled) before we got married and I would fall asleep in service while we just drove around aimllessly The other elders in the hall after we got some as my husband was the only elder for the first two years of our marriage came over to our home and talked to me about my falling asleep. I was working 30+ hours a week, plus pioneering and having book-study in the house, etc. Mono takes forever to get over when you have no time to rest but they did not care. I passed out in service due to exhaustion and I got in trouble because of it, I was never asked if I was OK it was just that I had made fool of myself.

Oh the dogs were horrible we lived in the country and everyone had dogs, a lot of mean pit-bulls. It was demanded of me that I go to all doors. When I said I was afraid of dog I was ridiculed and told I did not have enough faith in Jehovah.

When I got bite I was told it was no big deal. I will never forget the pain I felt in my gut when this dog bite me and my husband told me it was my fault because I had upset the householder. The lady was just in a really, really bad mood that day and she never wanted us there in the first place but everyone insisted that she really was a sheep and that I HAD TO GO BACK TO her. While this time she kicked the dog out of the house at the same time as she opened the door and the dog bite me. It hurt so bad but my husband was pissed at me for getting the lady mad and said I caused it.

It took six months for the bite to heal. It never broke the skin but it just bruised hugely. We had no money and so there was of course no doctor. But the pain of my husband being upset with me was worse then the bite was. Now he says it never happened and he never got upset, it was like I am crazy and made it all up.

I could go on and on. This is such a horrible religion.

LITS

97

Jehovah's Witnesses dismayed by new magazine format from Watchtower Society.

by Balaamsass in

jw
friends

wow.

i was surprised this week by calls from active jws complaining about the new magazine format, and more begging for money from the platform.. frankly i was surprized by this reaction since this is old news to jwn members.

i guess actually shuffling to the bookroom and grabbing the new "awake tracts" minus the inside cover forward ...awakened many sleepy, catatonic, bored jws who never read the things or go on the internet anyway.. any feedback from other areas?.

life is to short

My husband went out in service on Saturday and he brought home the new Jan WT and Awake. I asked what the service group thought of them and my husband said the of those that were out in service they were very excited saying that the slave had given them more room with the wider margins to take notes and that is so loving of the faith ful slave to give them so much room. Also that the reason they had to go to 16 pages was because of all the increases of new ones coming in the poor country's and somehow the US is helping speed up the work by cutting back on the size of the magazines.

All in all my husband said everyone in his hall was very happy about it though hardly anyone was out this past Saturday and who knows what they are thinking behind closed doors.

LITS

100

My mother passed away this morning...

by Tatiana in

jw
friends

for any old-school ex-jws here that remember my many posts about my abusive jw mother and my sister committing suicide because of it...she passed away this morning because she began to bleed out and refused a transfusion.

she had been in the hospital for a month.

it appears she suffered a stroke and wasn't found by the brothers & sisters for three days (they missed her at the meetings).

life is to short

I have just read some of your posts from 10 years ago. Your stories just broke my heart.

All I can say is I am just so very sorry. This religion is just so very hurtful. I have had experiences similar to yours. Both my parents were extremely abusive to me. Yet not one of the JW's helped me as a small child, teenager, newly married woman. If anything they sided with my parents telling me I needed to be in subjection more to them so as to not make them so upset with me after all my parents did love Jehovah.

Yet even though they sided with my parents when my mom died 10 years ago this coming February not one elder would conduct the memorial for her. A MS finally did. The elders were worse if that could possible when my dad died.

Now that it is is coming up to the 10 year anniversary of my mom's death I find myself getting so depressed thinking about it.

I was an elder wife when my parents died but it did not matter with how cold and uncaring the JW's the peers of my husband were toward me, some of them were down right mean.

I will never forget the day after my mom died the PO's COBE wife called me early in the morning saying to me that I must be so happy. I asked about what and she said the fact that your mom is dead as you hated her so much. Those words still hurt as I am writing this right now 10 years latter. I was sobbing and I said I did not hate her. The elder's wife said you sure acted like it. No mention of all the pain and hurt my mom had done to as a small child and than all my life.

I just truly hate this religion and how they are so cruel.

I am just so sorry for your as I know the pain you are going through. I loved my mom with every ounce of my being and I would have done anything to make her happy. I just did not know how. To be told that I hated her was horrible.

Just know that I am so sorry for what you are going through.

LITS